Kabal Caldwell
Contributing Writer
Being a college student athlete is no easy task. With workouts, classes, practices, road trips, and studying, student athletes have minimal downtime to relax and do things that they personally like. Having this challenging workload on a consistent basis can have a negative impact on the mental health of the youngest and most inexperienced student athletes: freshmen.
Throughout the campus, it has been revealed that many freshman student athletes have struggled academically in their first semester. It’s true that all freshmen, whether they play college sports or not, have difficulties making the transition to college academia. But, freshmen student athletes are significantly impacted because they feel that they haven’t had the time to fully process their new, strenuous, life circumstances before being rushed into balancing academics with sports.
Christian Webb (C ‘27) on the football team believes that immediately participating on the Sewanee football team on only his second day on campus made him prone to being distracted from his academics.
“We were working so hard in football that as soon it was over, I just wanted to relax and distract myself from the daily grind,” Webb said.
Webb, a defensive back from Dawsonville, GA, credits being mentally exhausted on many occasions that he often skipped classes to make some time to sleep and be well rested for practice that day. After receiving failing midterm grades, Webb worked hard in the second half of the semester, which resulted in him passing all of his classes.
In many ways, all college students find a hobby or a way to forget about the never ending workload of college courses. Common examples of how college students take a break from studying are by hanging out with friends and sometimes indulging in a party environment.
Football player Desmond Gilbert (C ‘27) says he too wanted to find some downtime on the constant grind that consists of preparing for a game from Monday through Friday, finishing some homework that’s due on Wednesday, taking a math test on Friday, and finally playing a high pressure game on Saturday.
“I was just consumed by distractions throughout the whole semester,” Gilbert said. “I wanted to enjoy the fun aspects of college.”
Nationally known as a big party school, the Sewanee’s student life environment took much of Gilbert’s attention away from academics. Gilbert states he had to drop a class halfway through the semester because he felt that he wouldn’t be able to pass it, forcing him to have to catch up academically in the near future.
Though they felt that the grind of a student athlete caused them struggle in the classroom, Webb and Gilbert noted that their academic woes stemmed from not having good time management. A key part of being a successful student athlete is knowing how to manage and take control of your time. It is why many college coaches all over the world require their new freshmen players to attend meetings on how to go about handling the workload that college brings. Basketball player Brianna Keating-Rendon (C ‘27) advocated that learning about time management helped her succeed academically in her first semester of college.
“The hardest part of my first semester of college was managing my time, but I was able to quickly learn,” Keating-Rendon said. “I didn’t have any problems academically while participating in basketball.”
It is evident that Keating-Rendon was able to quickly and successfully adapt to being a collegiate student athlete. Through time and experience, Webb and Gilbert will likely do the same as many upperclassmen student athletes have grown to be very exceptional in managing their time. In other words, the daily grind of being a student athlete stays the same, but how the young freshmans respond to it gets easier with time and dedication.